Student Demonstrators Are Killed at Tiananmen Square

The removal of Hu Yaobang as party chairman in
Jan. 1987 signaled a hard-line resurgence within the party. Hu—who
had become a hero to many reform-minded Chinese—was replaced by
former premier Zhao Ziyang. With the death of Hu in April 1989, the
ideological struggle spilled into the streets of the capital, as student
demonstrators occupied Beijing's Tiananmen Square in May, calling for
democratic reforms. Less than a month later, the demonstrations were
crushed in a bloody crackdown as troops and tanks moved into the square
and fired on protesters, killing several hundred.

In annual sessions of the rubber-stamp National
People's Congress in 1992 and 1993, the government called for accelerating
the drive for economic reform, but the sessions were widely seen as an
effort to maintain China's moves toward a market economy while retaining
political authoritarianism. At the session in 1993, Communist Party leader
Jiang Zemin was elected president, while hard-liner Li Peng was reelected
to another five-year term as prime minister. Since 1993, the Chinese
economy has continued to grow rapidly.